Honey bees are critical to U.S. agriculture.  And with no solid solutions to Colony Collapse Disorder, U.S. hives continue to dwindle.  This spring, beekeepers lost an estimated 29% of their bees to Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. You’d think that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of all institutions, would be right on top of such a threat.  Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

Last year Congress recognized CCD as a threat and granted the Department of Agriculture emergency funds to study the problem.   And the 2008 Farm Bill provides $20 million a year, for the next five years, to USDA for CCD related research.  That includes building the agency’s internal capacity by hiring staff and so forth; making grants to other research institutions; and tracking honey bee pests and pathogens.

But Bee Culture editor Kim Flottum has been tracking federal funding for colony collapse disorder research over at The Daily Green, and the results are, in his words, “an embarrassment to the USDA.” 

He’s right.  The federal money flowing into CCD research sounds pretty good until you consider:

The funding authorized for CCD research compared to the economic value of healthy bee colonies. To put it into perspective, the total price tag for the 2008 Farm Bill is 307 billion dollars over five years.  $20 million a year is equivalent to a little over 1% of the $15 billion worth of crops that honey bees pollinate in the U.S. each year. 

Who’s steering the ship? USDA has been unable to give a clear accounting of how it spent the emergency CCD funds Congress granted it last year.   At a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing on June 26, the head of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service was unable even to provide an estimate of how much additional funding might be needed to solve the problem.  

Coincidentally, USDA announced it is awarding a long-awaited, $4.1 million grant for CCD research to the University of Georgia a few weeks later. Progress is being made—but we can and need to do better. As entomologist Maryann Frazier put it at that same hearing, “How would our government respond if one out of every three cows was dying?”

That’s why NRDC is also calling on USDA to get serious about tackling the CCD problem. USDA must follow through on its responsibilities under the 2008 Farm Bill.  Moreover, the department should determine what funds are needed to fully address the problem, and inform Congress of its needs.  You can help by asking the department to prioritize the issue and work with Congress to ensure adequate funding.  Visit NRDC’s Bee Safe page to take action.